5. Briar
5
brIAR
I can feel him watching me.
He stands by my side like an eternal bodyguard. He stayed as the doctors ran their tests and asked me endless questions. He stayed even after everyone else left.
It should bother me, but it doesn’t.
I see something dark in the depths of his eyes. A possessiveness, an obsessive love. He looks at me like I belong to him.
I can’t deny the way his gaze sets my entire body on fire. But even when I feel like my skin is burning, something deep inside me remains frozen.
It tells me this man is trouble.
“Chloe, can I speak with you in private?” I ask, turning to my sister.
“I’m not leaving your side, solnishko ,” the big man says.
“Dimitri—” Chloe says.
“I don’t know you,” I say, turning to him.
“You don’t remember knowing me. There’s a difference,” he growls. There’s that dark possessiveness in his eyes again. It makes me burn and gives me chills at the same time.
“I want to speak with my sister alone,” I say.
“Anything you want to say to her, you can say in front of me,” he says.
“Dimitri, there’s no reason to make such a big deal out of this. Bri just wants to speak with me in private for a few minutes,” Chloe says in a soothing tone.
“I’ll be damned if I abandon her like the rest of you,” he spits.
Chloe’s eyesmistwith tears. I hate the sight of them.The second those tears fall on her cheeks, I decidethat Ihate him too.
“ Look ,” I snap, glaring at the man. “I don’t care who you think you are, but you do not get to speak to my sister that way.”
Hehas the audacity tochuckle. “I always loved it when your feisty side came out, solnishko .”
“And I would love it if you could stop breathing down my neck for two seconds.”
We stare at each other, neither of us willing to back down.
His eyes flick to the vitals monitor, where he can see the way he’s making my heart rate rise.
His hands ball into fists.
I can telljustby looking at his hands that he’s made his decision.
His big, meaty hands look like they’re capable of violence. I wonder what else they’re capable of. My skin feels hot and prickly all over. I berate myself for having these kinds of thoughts about this inconsiderate man.
“Five minutes,” he says, looking at Chloe and me. “And I’ll be watching the entire time.”
The door closes shut behind him.
“How do you know that man?” I ask Chloe.
“You really don’t remember anything about him?” Chloe asks.
I shake my head.
“He hasn’t left your side the entire time you were in a coma,” Chloe says, blowing out a breath. “He’s crazy about you.”
“I’ve never met him before in my life,” I say.
“You did meet him,” Chloe says gently. “You just don’t remember it.”
“Is there proof?” I ask.
“What?”
“Proof that I met him,” I say.
A little furrow forms between Chloe’s eyebrows. “What’s the last thing you remember, Bri?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Every day feels the same.”
Even as I saythat,I feel something dark and twisted lurking inside my head. I try to reach for it, but it slips awayjustwhen I get close enough. It watches me back, studying me as I try to study it.
“Where’s Grace?” I ask about our youngest sister. “I haven’t seen her all day.”
Chloe purses herlips,like she’s trying to keep herself from saying something out loud.
“Chloe, is there something I need to know?”
“A lot of things have changed, Bri,” she says. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start with where Grace is,” I say. “Is she safe?”
“We don’t know,” Chloe says. “I shouldn’t even be talking about this. The doctors instructed us not to put any stress on you.”
“How can you not know where Grace is?” I ask. “Is she with Mother?”
A skeleton hand wraps around my throat and squeezes. Hard.
“No, Mother doesn’t have anything to do with Grace’s disappearance,” Chloe says, shaking her head.
“Disappearance?” I repeat.
“She ran away from home,” Chloe says. “And speaking of missing people, we don’t know where Mother is either.”
“I don’t get it,” I say. “Mother would never let something like this happen.”
“Bri, that woman...she doesn’t love us,” Chloe says. “She never did. You know that, don’t you?”
I look at Chloe.
“OfcourseI know that,” I say. “But we’re pawns inhergame. She likes having power over us. It’s not like her to let us go.”
“So much has happened. I’ll start with the good stuff,” Chloe says. She unlocks her phone and shows me a family photograph. I already met Chloe’s fiancé earlier today, but she’s holding a baby in this photo.
“You had a baby?” I ask.
Chloe grins at me. “Yeah, his name is Aiden. He’s the light of my life.”
“He’s adorable,” I say. “And he looks nothing like you.”
Chloe laughs. “Yeah, he’s basically Max 2.0.”
Even as I talk to Chloe, I feel the Russian man’s eyes on me. He’s watching every little thing I do. Every movement I make.
His intensity is almost too much to handle.
“I want to meet my nephew,” I tell Chloe.
“He’s at home right now, but we can definitely arrange a visit,” Chloe says.
“Chloe, I want to get out of here,” I say. “You know how much I hate being in hospitals.”
My sisters and I have been in and out of hospitals our whole lives. The atmosphere always sets me on edge.
“The doctors advised that it would be best if you stayed for a few more days,” Chloe says.
“Chloe, please,” I say. “I can’t be here anymore. I feel like I’m suffocating.”
Tears spill from my eyes. It feels like there’s a never-ending reservoir of pain inside me.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” Chloe says.
“And that man...I really don’t know him, Chloe,” I say. “I don’t want him around.”
He fills my body with this heat. It’s the kind of heat that makes me ache for more. It makes me nervous and soothes me at the same time.
I don’t know what to make of it.
“I don’t think he’s going to take that very well,” Chloe says.
“I don’t understand how I could even meet someone like him,” I say.
“You snuck out of the house,” Chloe says.
“Me?” I ask, pointing at myself.
“That’s what Grace told me. You used to sneak out every night for weeks just to meet him. You first met Dimitri in a club.”
He said something about us meeting at a club.But I haveno recollectionof that.
At all.
“It will come back to you,” Chloe says.
I shake my head. “I don’t like how he looks at me. Like he owns me or something.”
It also makes me feel warmall over, but I know when a relationship is unhealthy. And the possessive look inhiseyes is the opposite of healthy.
“I’ll talk to him,” Chloe says. “I’ll tell him to dial it down a notch.”
I look at him through the window. He’s watching me. He’s always watching me.
Even though I know that I don’t want anything to do with him, I keep seeking him out. Having him around is like some drug that I’m already addicted to. And I feel a thrill every time our eyes lock.
But I also know I can’t be around it.
That man is bad news.
“Bri, there’s something you need to know,” Chloe says, pursing her lips. “Dimitri is not just someone you had a random fling with. He’s?—”
Before Chloe can finish her sentence, the Russian man storms inside the room.
“Your five minutes are up,”he announces.
Chloe sighs. “Dimitri, you really don’t have to be like this.”
But he’s not even looking at Chloe. All of his attention is trained on me.
“She said that she wants to come home,”Chloe says.
“You want to go home?”Dimitri asks me.
I nod.
He takes a seat next to me.All ofmy nerves feel shot, but having this man next to me feels like rubbing lotion on my skin after a hot bath. He’s comforting. Relaxing. Arousing.
“I can arrange that,”Dimitri says. “I’ve been waiting for you to come home.”
Chloe takes a deep breath. “Okay, you probably won’t want to hear this, but she wasn’t talking about going home with you.”
“I know,” he says.
“Bri should ease into things,”Chloe continues. “You know that she has no memory of even meeting you.”
He turns as still as a statue. He doesn’t even blink. And then he deflates.
“She’ll remember,”he grunts. “I’ll make her remember.”
“Maybe I don’t want to remember,”I lash out. “Did you ever think of that?”
The prowling animal in my mind is restless once again. It’s pacing all over the place, demanding to be noticed and to be left alone at the same time.
Dimitri pinches my jaw in his hand and forces me to look at him.
My heart starts racing again, but it’s not fear. It’s so much more than that.
It’s too much all at once, and I don’t know how I can even begin to understand it.
“There are things in life we can’t run from, solnishko ,”he says. “Destiny is one of them. And I’m your destiny.”
He thinks he can seal my fate with words.
My mother tried to do the same. And I’ll be damned if I let history repeat itself.
I’m left with only one choice.
I need to run away from this man. I need to go somewhere where he won’t ever find me.